The firefly glow of our headlamps mapped out the winding trail through trees and boulders to the moraine, the ghostly spire of Cerro Torre just peeking over the top. Cresting the ridge, across our field of view was luminescent ice, vertical rock and water: Laguna Torre and behind it a row of high sheer pinnacles rising above a sweep of…

We stood utterly alone in a moonscape of tumbled gray rocks left behind by the last Patagonian glaciation, the view of the full Chalten massif stretched before us – the best view in the house. Filling our field of view were the striking pinnacles of Cerro Torre (3102m) with its ever-present cap of rime ice[1], and its companions Torre Egger (2900m) and Cerro Standhardt (2800m). …